Karma
by FusseKat
Summary: A major jump back in time... On the eve of Goren’s first day in Major Case, several things are running through his mind.


_DISCLAIMER: Dick Wolf, NBCUni, USA Network and probably others can lay rightful claim to the rights of these characters – not I – unfortunately. No harm intended._

A major jump back in time. On the eve of Goren's first day in Major Case, several things are running through his mind.

* * *

**Karma**

In the otherwise neatly kept apartment where every thing had a logical place, at this moment in time the desk was a mess. Crumpled napkins littered the surface of the mahogany and leather top, vying for space among the haphazardly strewn files, pens, post-its and the open pizza box, that was responsible for the crumbled napkins . And yet despite all that, Bobby Goren could still see and make use of his laptop. Life's little quirks never ceased to amaze him.

Leaning back in his chair and hearing its familiar creak of protest, he stretched as he lazily watched a nearby curtain flutter from the soft breeze coming from outside. To his credit, he did try to turn his attention back onto the computer where it belonged, but there seemed to be a severe malfunction in the communication between his brain and the muscles in his neck. He had more success in motivating himself enough to both look at the TV _and_ grab another slice of pizza, simultaneously. _Who said he couldn't multi-task?_

_Come on, Goren. Get off your ass, do something… _he chided himself. It wasn't as if anything was on the television, anyway. He flipped through the channels, looking for anything that held the slightest interest, stopping briefly on a beer commercial featuring a pretty redhead. _Hmm. Beer is good._ Now in truth, he couldn't tell you the brand of beer being advertised, but whichever brand it was they sure knew how to capture a guy's attention. Knowing the psychology behind the manipulation, didn't deter him from enjoying that manipulation. _Hey, we can't all be saints, nor can we be saints all the time._ The next channel at least offered him the distraction of a hockey game.

Bobby sighed, knowing he should be working. He expressly asked to see the case file he was going to start working on Monday morning, his first day in Major Case. Even though he'd wanted to get up to speed on the fraud case at the time, now he was finding it difficult to follow - he would have taken an entirely different approach from the beginning. There had to be some sort of karmic loophole for those not really on the squad yet, to be able to get out of extra homework, even though he had asked for it.

The little 'ding' coming from his computer taunted him with the reality that his aimless mental wandering had to end, for now. Putting his half-eaten slice of pizza in his mouth for safekeeping, he turned, cleared off the few napkins that had been blown onto the keyboard, and navigated to his inbox. _Lewis_, _now what_… he thought, opening the newest message. _Hey Bobby, yadda yadda yadda. _

The pizza dropped out of his mouth, flipping sauce side down onto his lap, causing him to curse. As he peeled the slice off his thigh, and tossed it into the box, he frowned at the monitor in front of him. There was also another new email, this one from his new Captain, James Deakins. Deakins had introduced Bobby to his new partner, Richard Dennison on Friday, as part of his orientation to Major Case. His email was short and concise.

_Richard Dennison will no longer be your partner. Your new senior partner will be Alex Eames. My office Monday 8AM for introductions. Forget the case file you received on Friday. Monday will be a different case. ' Alex' is short for Alexandra…_

Bobby closed the email, leaned his chair back as far as it would, the loud creaking protesting the additional strain and gazed at the ceiling. Okay, so he hadn't even started yet and his new partner had already bailed. This was a promising start. He guessed Dennison had probably been told that Bobby was a psych case, always trying to pick apart how the subjects twitched. Well, that was just fine. He'd had female partners before, actually he preferred them. As a group, the women he worked with had been more accepting of his approach than the men he'd been assigned to work with.

Several minutes later, Bobby sat up and looked at the file that lay open before him. In disgust he slapped the manila folder closed and pushed it between the cover of his binder. _No point in wasting my time with this any longer and no reason to feel guilty for not wanting to continue working on it._ He hadn't been feeling the case. Not like he should be, and that was damn aggravating. He was _good_ at this stuff. That's how he made it to Major Case. Maybe this was that karmic loophole he'd been hoping for earlier.

Bobby rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on_. Come on, Bobby, you've worked for this day too long. _Maybe things really did work out the way they were meant to.

It started to rain, which was enough to prompt him to follow that thought through. Getting out of his chair, he allowed himself another generous stretch, before going over to shut the window and head towards the glass door to the small terrace to see a bigger picture of what the future held. The night sky was grey, covered by a blanket of clouds, obscuring the stars. Thunder rolled in quickly and lightening shimmered from distant clouds still out over the Atlantic. He shut the door.

Yawning and rubbing his face, Bobby wandered his way towards the bathroom where he gave his face a quick splash, rifled through the medicine cabinet for some aspirin, and gazed at his face in the mirror as if trying to demand the answers to everything from his mirror image. _If only life worked that way._

He left the bathroom without the answers, as clueless to the mystery as always and went to set out tomorrow's clothes. He tossed out a dark blue suit, letting it land on the chair in his bedroom, then slid hanger after hanger that held his array of dress shirts. _ Hmm. Yellow, no. Green? _He pulled at the pastel colored sleeve, then decided against it. _The blue? What about the pink, gee, thanks Mom._

In the end, a white shirt landed on the chair beside his suit and Bobby hit the sofa in the living room with the full intention of taking a nap, then using the treadmill in the corner of the room. He ached _all over_. There was no way he was going to get anything done right now, anyway. His eyes felt as if they were closing of their own volition, so he was going to have to settle for listening to the game. He pulled at the throw that laid over the back of the sofa, snuggling down into the well worn areas of the sofa that contoured to his body perfectly.

_I didn't get that 'Perfect Partner' vibe from Dennision, in the first place._ Maybe he'd get that when he met… what was her name again? Eames? Yeah, that was it. When he met Eames on Monday morning, maybe then he'd sense that mythic and elusive – 'Perfect Partner' vibe.

He had no idea how true that would be.


End file.
